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Publishers WeeklyThriller Awardwinner Piccirilli's dedication, which begins, "For everyone with a sin that can't be laid aside," sets the somber tone for this superior noir set on Long Island, the sequel to 2012's The Last Kind Words. Terrier "Terry" Rand, who's trying to stay honest despite being born into a family of crooks, suffers from nightmares. He's haunted by the ghosts of dead family members, including his older brother, Collie, executed for murders committed in the first book. When his former best friend, Chub Wright, whose wife, Kimmy, was an old flame of Terry's, gets involved with the wrong bad guys and ends up in their cross hairs, Terry finds himself drawn into yet another morally complex situation. Hard-edged prose("I'd stuck an icepick through the spleen of the conversation") sustains the gritty feeling that pervades this novel of attempted redemption for the crimes of others.



About the Author

Tom Piccirilli

Tom Piccirilli is the author of more than twenty-five novels including A CHOIR OF ILL CHILDREN, SHADOW SEASON, THE COLD SPOT, and THE LAST KIND WORDS. He's a four-time winner of the Stoker Award, two-time winner of the International Thriller Award, and has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and twice for the Edgar Award. Marilyn Stasio of The New York Tims Book Review called THE LAST KIND WORDS, "A caustic thriller...the characters have strong voices and bristle with funny quirks." New York Times bestselling thriller writer Lee Child said of Tom's work, "Perfect crime fiction...a convincing world, a cast of compelling characters, and above all a great story" And Publishers Weekly extols, "Piccirilli's mastery of the hard-boiled idiom is pitch perfect, particularly in the repartee between his characters, while the picture he paints of the criminal corruption conjoining the innocent and guilty in a small Long Island community is as persuasive as it is seamy. Readers who like a bleak streak in their crime fiction will enjoy this well-wrought novel." Keir Graff of Booklist wrote, "There's more life in Piccirilli's THE LAST KIND WORDS (and more heartache, action, and deliverance) than any other novel I've read in the past couple of years." And Kirkus states, "Consigning most of the violence to the past allows Piccirilli (The Fever Kill, 2007, etc.) to dial down the gore while imparting a soulful, shivery edge to this tale of an unhappy family that's assuredly unhappy in its own special way."



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